T Shirt Printing

A more up market look is generated by the polo shirt. This can be warn by men or women and come in many shapes and sizes. the major types of polo shirt are cotton, mixed cotton and man made fiber, short sleeve and long sleeved.

Schools use polo shirts for school uniform, because the can take the rough treatment they will get from the kids and are not to expensive to replace. Plus the tend to look smarter because they have a collar.

The other positive attribute of the polo is that you can embroider it. T-shirts tend to be too thin and can chafe. With the polo’s longer life expectancy the permanence of embroidery is worth the extra cost.

A massive part of the process of t shirt printing is the actual t-shirt. There are many different t-shirts to choose from, for many different requirements.

As far as printing is concerned the major concern is the type of material that is used to manufacture the t-shirt. Most t-shirts are made from 100% cotton, others are made from all sorts of man make fibers.

Some processes like DTG can not print onto man made fibers such as polyester because it would not absorb the dye. Most DTG printers will cope with a 60% cotton to 40% man made fibre mixture but I would not recommend going as low as 50% -50% cotton to polyester mixes. It will look ok when you first get the t-shirt but will soon start to fade and washout.

A cause of much concern and often dispute when ordering t shirt printing is getting the position and size of logo correct in the briefing stage. If this is wrong when you finally get the clothing delivered, there is not a lot you can do about it.

The most common place to have a company logo is FLB or front-left-breast. Now how could that be a problem? Well for a start, is your FLB or my FLB looking at you? The best way to remember is that it will end up on the same side as your left arm. At least that is the industry standard interpretation.

Subli Flock was invented to enable t-shirt printers to use sublimation on coloured garments. Where as sublimation could only be used on white polyester garments, Subli Flock is a white polyester material that you sublimate onto, then cut out with a laser plotter and finally press onto the garment.

As with sublimation the end result is very durable. Because it is made of material rather than a vinyl sheet, it blends with the garment better and looks less like a stuck on badge. The other advantage is that you can press it into most types of garment.

The down side of the process is that because you have to cut the image out of the material before you press it onto the garment, you can only have logo designs with a hard continuous edge.

Modern technology has started to revolutionize the sports side of t-shirts. Man made materials like polyester offer Dry-Fit garments that give the advantage of clothing that can breathe, with the added characteristic of not absorbing sweat. This prevents them from becoming wet, heavy and uncomfortable to wear.

But from the point of view of a t-shirt printer it creates a problem. If the image is multi-coloured or has a soft edge, you cannot use DTG. DTG needs at least an 50% cotton mix of material for the dye to bind properly.

The solution is a clever product called Sublimation which creates a chemical reaction with the synthetic material and permanently dyes it. There are only a few companies like Crisp that can provide this product, but it is very handy to know you can still put sophisticated designs on Dry-Fit clothing.

DTG printing is the greatest innovation for t-shirt printing ever!

It solves all the problems of normal garment decoration. This is done by a machine that works on a very similar way to your ordinary desk top printer. It is actually about ten times larger and the printer head sprays dye rather than ink.

So you can design anything you want and it will print onto the garment in the same way your household ink jet, onto white paper.

White paper being the operative word. If you put a black sheet of paper into your desk top printer, you wouldn’t expect a very good result. The reason for this is the printer doesn’t have a white cartridge. This is because it relies on the white  paper to provided the white needed in the image. The other problem is the reds, blues and yellows don’t show up if you print them onto a dark colour.

This is where the DTG printers fall into two types. One type that can only print onto white or light coloured garments. The other that has an extra process that prints a layer of white first, and them prints colour on top of that.

Great I hear you say, problem solved! Well maybe

I have just got back from the Printwear & Promotion exhibition and have studied all the available options for direct to garment printing on coloured or black garments.

Brother has a fantastic reputation with the machine it produces for printing on white garments. They are due to have a coloured version of the machine for sale in this country by this coming October. The other problem is that it is rumoured  to cost about 50,000 Euros.

There are plenty of other cheaper versions of direct to garment printers in the market place, but there are serious issues with usability and reliability. This is generally caused by the white ink which is a suspension fluid and clogs the jets up on the printer head. 

So having looked at everything that was on offer at the exhibition I found the HM1-C printer made by Yes Ltd to be the best product on offer. It has a circulating ink system which seems to be very  effective at stopping ink clogging and various new technologies that put it ahead of the game.  In fact we were so impressed that we have bought one, so watch this space and we will keep you informed  on how we get on with it.

Also known as Digital Transfer or Vinyl Transfer.

This process is based on a very thin vinyl film which comes in a variety of different colours. The film can be placed on a digital plotter that cuts out the shape, and has been created on a design program like Coral Draw or Illustrator.

This technique is ideally suited to logo’s that are based on simple type or silhouette images. For example if your logo is “RAC” or “Honda” then this is the technique for you.

Because the origination is created within a graphics program and goes straight to the plotter, there are no expensive screens or digitization to be done. This means there are no expensive setup charges!

So if you are only after 10 or 20 t-shirts it is quite viable. You can literally phone up the t-shirt printers and say ” give me 20 medium black t-shirts with my company name, printed across the shoulders in red using  Arial bold,” and you would get a nice result.

That is the other point, you can print light colours onto dark garments. The vinyl is totally opaque so white comes up beautifully clean and bright when printed on black or navy blue. The colour will not fade and the vinyl is happy to stretch with the garment.

The material is not actually printed onto the garment. The plotter cuts the shape of the logo out of the vinyl sheet and the excess material is peeled away. This is then pressed into the garment using a special press that applies extreme heat and huge pressure. If this is done properly the end result is as permanent as embroidery. But you constantly come across people who have had bad experiences of the film coming off or the garment or cracking.  Good Transfer printers will guarantee the work for the life of the garment provided you adhere to the recommended washing instruction for the garment.

This brings us to the low volume end of the t-shirt market place.

All the techniques listed below do not have setup costs, which often makes having small quantities of t-shirt printed, prohibitive.

Transfer

DTG white only

DTG white/black

WOW

Subli-flock

Sublimation

Paper Transfer

I will write in due course, an individual blog on each of the above,. I must emphasise that all judgements and opinions voiced in this blog are based on my own experiences and not scientific testing. Having said that, if I  have said anything that you disagree with, you can aways write a comment that everyone will see.

Screen Printing used to be the only alternative to embroidery and probably got the whole concept of modern day corporate clothing started. It has been around for over 50 years and is tried and tested.

It is very versatile and can print most colours onto most colour garments!

The big problem with screen printing is the setup charges. For every different colour in the design you want to print, you have to create a screen. This in turn costs something like £15 to £30 each screen!

So before you start paying for the printing you could easily have a bill for over £60.

This problem is diluted when you want to print large quantities of garments. To be cost effective, you need to be talking in terms of over 100 items. The unit printing cost is very low. But be  very careful when you get a quote because you could get a price for printing only, with the screen costs showing up on the bill when the job is done.

The resulting quality is usually high, though you will be aware of a texure where the printing has taken place.

Embroidery is probably the oldest method of decorating garments. It is certainly one of the most versatile. With a character all of its own, it is often considered to be too expensive.  Modern technology has vastly reduced the cost, but you still have to pay for Digitization. This can cost from about £15 to £50 depending on the size and complexity of the logo or crest you want embroidered.

You can embroider most garments, that other processes would find difficult, including fleece jackets which  have raised pile or woolly hats.

Of course, if you have a business that needs a whole range of clothing on a regular basis the digitization fee soon pays for itself, especially if you have a multi coloured logo.

With most other forms of printing you have to pay extra, for each extra colour used in your logo. The beauty of embroidery is that it makes no difference.

The only time I would be a little bit cautious  is with stretchy or very thin garments. Stretchy garments can suffer from puckering and with thin garments, the stitched backing can feel a bit rough, if you wear it next to the skin. Sometimes, if you have a very large logo, it can actually feel a little heavy and because of that, uncomfortable.